By Joseph Szydlowski
The Cincinnati Post (Ohio)
Copyright 2007 ProQuest Information and Learning
All Rights Reserved
ProQuest SuperText
Copyright 2007 Cincinnati Post
INDIAN HILL, Ohio — Three firefighters hurt battling a massive house blaze in Indian Hill Thursday night have been released from the hospital and five others who were still being treated are responding well.
Dr. Kevin Yakuboff, a University Hospital physician, said that the five patients there were in stable condition in the burn unit.
Those firefighters and a sixth were injured Wednesday night after a “rapid-fire expansion” - an eruption of heated air and fire - engulfed them inside Jim Jaeger’s house at 9550 Cunningham Road, blowing out several of the house’s windows and a hole in the roof.
The fire started in the attic on the third floor. Indian Hill-Madeira Fire Chief Steve Ashbrock said that officials suspect that a torch used in the removal of paint may have started the fire.
The sixth firefighter, Robert Foppe, was released from the hospital Thursday afternoon.
“I saw him in the firehouse 20 minutes ago,” Ashbrock said Thursday evening, noting that Foppe attended the department’s weekly meeting.
His father and fellow firefighter, Andrew Foppe, remains in University Hospital.
A Sycamore Township firefighter was taken to Jewish hospital because of chest pains, while a Loveland firefighter was taken to Bethesda due to a shoulder injury involving carrying heavy equipment.
Both have been released.
“Most of the burns appear to be second degree,” Yakuboff said, cautioning that doctors won’t know for sure how badly burned their patients for at least a few days.
He said that firefighters’ exposed skin - hands, ankles and faces - suffered the burns.
Ashbrock said he was thankful that no one died.
Yakuboff said that the firefighters recovery time will vary depending on the severity of their burns.
First-degree burns, he said, are like sunburns. Second-degree burns cause blisters, but the underlying skin remains alive.
“With third-degree burns,” he said, “all levels of the skin have been destroyed.”
Yakuboff said that if the firefighters suffered only second-degree burns, they could recover within two weeks.
But for right now, doctors are working on taking care of the firefighters’ burns and pain.
“It’s always difficult seeing another person injured,” Yakuboff said.
Another doctor, Kevin Staples, said that he’d never seen so many firefighters injured by one blaze during his 14 years at University.
Ashbrock said that his department will search for the cause of the fire while its comrades heal.
Investigators will also try to determine whether the rapid-fire expansion that injured the firefighters was a backdraft - in which a sudden ventilation fans the flames - or a flashover, in which the atmosphere becomes so hot that the smoke ignites.
“The real challenge is to keep it from happening again,” Ashbrock said.
Though the fire destroyed the attic and large parts of the roof, it left the two other floors of the house with little damage, including Jaeger’s library.
The small part of Jaeger’s Corvette collection that was at his residence was not damaged and moved to safety. The rest of his collection was at another location.